In branding, the context has become the product

• Merit Beauty could only feel like a calming Millennial brand once it was positioned in the chaos of Sephora’s Gen Z aisles.


• Costco spends a lot of money to make their warehouses look stripped down, so what you buy off the crate feels like a good deal.


• Red Bull didn’t mean anything until Dietrich Mateschitz and Chaleo Yoovidhya started placing empty

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There’s a famous Virgil Abloh quote where he says, “If I put a candle in an all-white gallery space it looks like a piece of art. If I put it in a garage it looks like a piece of trash.”

Abloh understood something that very few brand strategists get: the context is what creates the need for the product in the first place.